If spy czar named, CIA chief's role may be reduced

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, August 11, 2004

WASHINGTON - The CIA director's job, once viewed as America's top spy battling Cold War enemies and foreign terrorists, would change dramatically under recommendations by the Sept. 11 commission, which follow a string of intelligence failures, experts said Tuesday.

The position former CIA officer Porter Goss was nominated for could become a deputy under a national intelligence director, if commission recommendations become law.

The new intelligence director, not the CIA chief, would control purse strings and set overall intelligence strategies under that proposal.

"If the intelligence czar has budget and hire-and-fire authority, then the CIA director will not have the same power — he'll be reporting to the new intelligence director," said former congressman Charlie Wilson, who once played a key role in overseeing the agency in Congress.

Even under President Bush's vision of a less powerful intelligence czar who lacks budgetary authority and hire-andfire responsibility, the CIA director's role is seriously diminished, because he still "loses one of his two hats, and is no longer director of central intelligence," said Vince Cannistraro, a former top CIA official.

"The CIA director will be more submerged in the intelligence bureaucracy."

A string of intelligence failures — culminating in America being surprised by terrorists on Sept 11, 2001, and then overestimation of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion — has created a strong desire in Congress to curb the CIA director's power.

The changes proposed by the 9/11 Commission would make it impossible for the agency head to be as powerful as CIA bosses Allen Dulles and William Casey, who used their clout to aggressively battle communism during the Cold War, experts said.

No longer principle adviser

The CIA director would still have a critical role as the top deputy responsible for foreign intelligence, clandestine services, economic intelligence gathering and other traditional spy agency roles.

But the CIA director would no longer be the president's principle intelligence adviser as every agency chief has been through George Tenet, who recently resigned under pressure.

Vickers said one 9/11 Commission proposal that could severely restrain a future CIA director calls for moving all clandestine paramilitary operations to a special operations command inside the Pentagon.

That would cut the CIA out of operations like the ones that helped cripple the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Vickers said.

"How the military would do covert paramilitary operations through surrogates better than the CIA ... is a mystery," he said.

Ties to Bush might help

Nonetheless, Goss' tenure as head of the
House Intelligence Committee
along with his background as a CIA clandestine services officer and as a military intelligence officer give him unquestioned credentials, experts said.

His strong ties to Bush would make his voice heard along with the national intelligence director and other officials.

"We believe the national intelligence director must have power. And power comes from the budget. And power comes from personnel. And power comes from being able to set common standards across the intelligence community," Hamilton said.

"If he does not have that power, then we don't think it's going to be very effective."